6 ms·

You should be aware of the death toll for the construction of the first transcontinental railroad. It's not something we can legally replicate.

• WalterBright 5y ago
  Life was generally more dangerous and harder those days, and medical practice was terrible. Horses, for example, regularly killed people in those days (more than cars do), and their use is not the romantic image we have of them today. If you can show that the railroad was built on blood, I'd be interested.
  • throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Exactly. It was a high dollar construction project. If anything it was safer than a mundane bottom dollar "cut whatever corners we need to be the lowest bidder" project. Everything was just that much more dangerous then.
    • WalterBright 5y ago
      Workers also flocked to those railway jobs, because they were better than their other options.
      • secabeen 5y ago
        Most of the work was done by Chinese immigrants, who didn't have many other choices.
        • killjoywashere 5y ago
          This combative assertion of race-based victimization is not as productive toward the conversation as people may think. Indeed, it tends to drive a great many people into defensive positions where they hunker down. I grew up in Omaha, the end of the transcontinental railroad that Californians tend to forget about. I'm very sorry that so many Chinese immigrants died working on the railroad. I am also saddened by the many others who died, even though they were not immigrants of Chinese extraction. I'm also saddened by the atrocious conditions these immigrants escaped in China and compelled them to the US (I assume they did not desire to come to the US, and it's worth noting many no doubt landed elsewhere). While the CRPP may have preferred Chinese labor, I do not find evidence that they did "most of the work". Indeed, the main employer of the Chinese was the CRPP, which laid 690 miles of the 1912 miles of track. The Union Pacific labor was primarily sourced from the remains of the Union and Confederate armies. It is correct that 80% of the CRPP labor force was eventually (not initially) Chinese. It is also correct that the CRPP laid 36% of the rail by distance. First order approximation would suggest that the Chinese fraction of the built distance is between 15 and 29%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_transcontinental_railroad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_transcontinental_railroa... https://railroad.lindahall.org/essays/brief-history.html https://railroad.lindahall.org/essays/brief-history.html
          • WalterBright 5y ago
            > I assume they did not desire to come to the US If you have evidence of Chinese slave ships coming to the US, I'd like to see it.
      • jcranmer 5y ago
        If I recall correctly, the Central Pacific had to resort to advertising for railroad labor in China to get sufficient labor force (so not merely able to recruit from recent immigrants, but having to induce immigration to get labor). The Union Pacific, for its part, relied heavily on Irish immigrants and ex-soldiers from the Union and Confederate armies. That's hardly people flocking to the railway jobs.
        • WalterBright 5y ago
          Zero of them were forced into railroad work.
          • IkmoIkmo 5y ago
            That's not the point, the point is people weren't flocking to these jobs as you claimed. > The Central Pacific hired some Canadian and European civil engineers and surveyors with extensive experience building railroads, but it had a difficult time finding semi-skilled labor. Most Caucasians in California preferred to work in the mines or agriculture. The railroad experimented by hiring local emigrant Chinese as manual laborers, many of whom were escaping the poverty and terrors of the war in the Sze Yup districts in the Pearl River Delta of Guangdong province in China It's like saying Bangladeshi workers flock to hard labour in Qatar because, sure because working in Bangladesh might be worse, not because the terrible conditions of working on infrastructure in Qatar as a Bangladeshi is some kind of standard for labour conditions or rights we should all aspire to.
            • WalterBright 5y ago
              > the point is people weren't flocking to these jobs as you claimed Of course they were. Otherwise they simply couldn't have built it. They could not round people up, chain them together, and force march them to the construction site.
              • IkmoIkmo 5y ago
                Sure, just like there's girls flocking to become prostitutes in parts of Thailand, and Bangladeshi to become construction workers in Qatar. Not because of desperation, no, out of free will in search for great jobs, they're not slaves you see... The way you completely miss this point and imply we should compare today's construction standards to that of the past and look at the past favourably due to all the potential efficiencies in taking shortcuts on labour conditions ("after all, desperate immigrant impoverished workers showed up freely, it must not be a problem) makes me glad you're not driving public policy today. I'm sure you're just as eager to give up your own comfy labour conditions for the sake of the project. I'm quite done arguing with someone who's not discussing in good faith.
• asdff 5y ago
  Pretty normal accident rates are found worldwide for modern HSR construction that doesn't take two decades to build a single line like CA HSR. Look at what China or Spain can build in that time span for less money.